


It's Always Sunny In Another Dimension

by attheborder



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The OA (TV)
Genre: Fusion - The OA, Gen, interpretive dance, sheer insanity, this is why i shouldn't have rights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 23:52:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18861490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attheborder/pseuds/attheborder
Summary: “Guys, come on, get in on this,” Mac said, as he repeated the up-down arms-together sequence from the second movement.“Yeah, we need five people for it to work!” said Charlie. He was thrusting his hands out in front of him and wiggling his fingers, looking for all the world like an epileptic monkey.Finally, after what seemed like at least thirty minutes of this, Dennis said, “This is incredibly stupid. You’re all stupid.”(Or: The Gang All Have Near Death Experiences)





	It's Always Sunny In Another Dimension

_ 4 PM _

_ On a Wednesday _

_ Philadelphia, PA _

 

“Dude, this isn’t working,” Charlie said, struggling under the weight of the large neon sign they were attempting to winch up to the roof of Paddy’s Pub. 

“No, no, I can do this!” Mac groaned, from fifteen feet above Charlie. Veins were popping in his biceps as he strained on the rope. 

“Really? Cause it kind of seems like I’m supporting the whole operation here,” Charlie said. 

“This is nothing,” said Mac. “I bench double this every single day. I could probably do it alone, but you insisted you wanted to help, so I’m actually doing you a favor by letting you  _ think  _ that you’re supporting it, when really it’s  _ me  _ who’s exerting a tremendous amount of muscular force—”

Mac realized that somewhere during his rant, the weight had lessened on his arms, and for a split second he was immensely proud of himself for reaching his full load-bearing potential. But then he looked down, and noticed that he was no longer holding the rope at all.

The sign had crashed to the ground. And Charlie was laid out beside it, bleeding from the head. 

  
  
  


“Oh, fuck. Charlie? Charlie!?” 

Mac scrambled down the fire escape and kneeled next to Charlie’s lifeless body. He felt around for a pulse, but couldn’t find anything. 

“Wake up! Wake up, man!” Mac slapped Charlie on the face, gently at first, and then harder, but Charlie just laid there, completely motionless. 

Mac began to hyperventilate quietly. If Charlie was dead, that meant he wouldn’t be able to help get the sign up onto the roof. And if they couldn’t get the sign up onto the roof, then nobody would know about the highly Instagram-friendly Museum Of Pickles & Beets the rest of the gang was busy constructing inside the bar, and if nobody knew about the Museum then they wouldn’t be able to sell any of the limited, exclusive $75 tickets, and then the whole scheme would be a total bust. 

Also, Mac might go to jail for killing Charlie. That was definitely a possibility. 

He decided that if Charlie didn’t come back to life in the next ten minutes, he would set the body on fire, and then put the ashes in the dumpster, and then tell everyone that Charlie had run off to join the circus.

Ten minutes passed. Mac looked at Charlie, and just to be sure, gave him another slap on the face.

Charlie jerked back to life with a spasm. As if pulled by some invisible force, his right arm swung up, reaching into the air with a flutter of his fingers, before falling back down to his side again. 

He opened his eyes, and turned his head to look at Mac.

“Was I dead?” he asked. 

“Uh, yeah. For a hot second there. And I just wanna say, right off the bat, that it’s  _ not  _ my fault you got killed, if you had been following my workout plans you would have—”

“I ate a rat,” Charlie said, cutting Mac off. 

“Excuse me? When was this?” 

“Just now. When I was dead.” 

“I had my eyes on you the whole time, dude. That did not happen. Dead people can’t eat shit. I feel like that should be obvious, just as a scientific thing.”

“Not here!” clarified Charlie, struggling up into a seated position. “There. In the afterlife.” He squeezed his eyes closed, trying to bring back up the memory. “I was crawling through a sewer…”

“I’m gonna have to stop you there, Charlie, because you’ve already lost me,” said Mac dismissively. “A  _ sewer _ , in the afterlife? No, no, no. Heaven is like, big clouds, white light, God sitting there, displaying his heavenly countenance and rock-hard abs…” He gazed off into the distance for a moment before re-focusing on Charlie. “Wait, wait. Why am I assuming  _ you’d  _ go to Heaven? You’re a total dirtbag.”

Charlie ignored this mildly insulting tangent and continued: “Anyway. A rat crawled out of a pile of trash in front of me, and it was looking at me, and I started to get this feeling like it...  _ wanted _ me to eat it.”

“So you did?”

“Yeah, man, I shoved it all up in my mouth and choked it down. The tail was like, a spaghetti, but alive.” 

Mac made a gagging sound. “But  _ why? _   What was the point?”

Charlie was silent for a moment, his face calm and pensive in a way that Mac had rarely ever seen. “It’s… complicated.” 

“You mean, there was no point,” Mac scoffed. “You just die and go to… wherever you went, and decide it’s high time to chow down on a rodent.”

“No! There  _ was  _ a point,” Charlie insisted. He got unsteadily to his feet, assisted by Mac’s strong grip. “It  _ taught _ me something.” His arm drifted into the air again, made that strange fluttery movement, and then dipped down before rising again to his mouth.

Mac watched this strange movement with curiosity. “The rat taught you... to dance?” 

Charlie looked at Mac with excitement. “Yeah! A  _ dance!  _ The coolest, most  _ powerful _ dance. A  _ magic  _ dance. It makes me feel like a superhero… like I can do whatever I want…” 

“That’s not fair,” Mac said, frowning. “How come  _ you  _ get to be a dancing superhero? I really think that’s a position that I would be far better qualified for, no offense. I mean, if we’re talking experience, fitness, stamina, I am fully maxed out.”

Charlie grabbed Mac by the shoulders. “You get a dance too,” he said, with the utmost sincerity, looking deeply into Mac’s eyes. “We all get a dance. There’s five of them. One for each of us.”

“Really?”

Charlie began guiding Mac towards the back door of the bar. “You’ll see,” he said.

“I will?” Mac asked, not entirely sure of what was happening.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it all figured out. Listen,” Charlie said, as they entered the back of the bar, “just go down there and wait for a couple minutes.” They turned the corner to face the door that lead down to the bar’s basement. 

“Into the basement?” Mac said. “That’s where my dance is?”

“Yeah, dude, down the stairs. Stand at the back of the room, near the furnace. Wait a couple minutes, until you’re dead, and then as soon as you go to that other place, find something alive and gulp it right down. Then you’ll know the next part of the dance.” 

“You sure this is gonna work?” Mac asked, but he was more or less already convinced. Classic Charlie-Logic, the kind of thing he’d learned by this point not to argue with. 

“Oh, yeah, totally. It’s gonna be huge. This dance is gonna change our  _ lives!  _ You’ll see what I mean.”

Mac obediently descended down into the basement. Dennis appeared around the corner as Charlie was closing the door, holding a beet that he was busy attaching googly eyes to. 

“Charlie, did you just trap Mac in the basement? It’s not safe down there,” Dennis said. “The carbon monoxide. He could die.”

“Yeah, I know, obviously. That’s the whole point.” 

Dennis blinks, nonplussed. “What happened to the neon sign? Did you get it up? We gotta start ramping up interest for the Museum. Make that shit go viral!” 

“Dennis, we are dealing with something  _ way  _ more important than pickles and beets right now,” Charlie snapped.

“Seriously?” Dennis said. “This was  _ your  _ scheme, dude! My hands have been  _ permanently  _ stained by beet juice, you’ve made me sacrifice my burgeoning career as a finger model, and if you think you’re going to—”

“Shhhhh! Shut up!” Charlie shushed Dennis mid-rant. He pressed his ear to the basement door, listening for the sound of Mac’s body hitting the floor, and held his index finger up at Dennis in a silent plea to stay quiet.

A minute later, the telltale  _ thump  _ came, and Charlie immediately flung the door open and rushed down the stairs.

Mac was lying sprawled on the dusty basement ground, as lifeless as Charlie had been just minutes earlier. Charlie hooked his arms under Mac’s shoulders and dragged him back up the stairs, where he deposited him unceremoniously right at Dennis’ feet.

Dennis looked down at Mac, and then back up to Charlie. His face was a mask of horror. “You… you _ killed  _ him!” 

“I literally just said like a minute ago that that was the  _ whole point _ . I feel like you weren’t listening to me when I—”

The beet dropped from Dennis’s hand, forgotten, as he kneeled beside Mac and began performing CPR. Charlie watched him frantically deliver mouth-to-mouth and chest compressions, sweat beading on his brow. Were those tears forming in his eyes as he pumped up and down? 

Finally, after five cycles, Dennis pressed down on Mac’s chest and he sputtered awake. Dennis collapsed back with relief, wiping his face with his beet-stained hands. 

Charlie leaned down, his head hovering directly over Mac’s. “Did you do it? Did you eat something?”

Mac swallowed, trying to find the words for his experience. “I was in a forest… and a butterfly flew right in front in front of me…”

“And?!” Charlie said. 

“I grabbed it, and ate it,” Mac said slowly, almost doubtingly.  

“Yes, man! Do you feel it? Inside you now?” Charlie asked.

“Guys, what the fuck is going  _ on?”  _ Dennis half-screamed hoarsely. 

Mac didn’t say anything. His eyes drifted closed again. Charlie and Dennis looked at each other with mild concern. 

Suddenly, Mac’s hands lifted to his chest, cupped like two symmetrical C’s, and then he pulled them apart with gasping breaths.

Charlie pumped a fist in the air. “Dude!  _ The second movement! _ ”

***

Charlie and Mac unceremoniously cleared all of the in-progress beet-and-pickle-themed backdrops out of the way, so that they would have plenty of room to practice the two movements in front of the bar. Dee, Frank, and Dennis watched them from near the entrance.

“Guys, come on, get in on this,” Mac said, as he repeated the up-down arms-together sequence from the second movement.

“Yeah, we need five people for it to work!” said Charlie. He was thrusting his hands out in front of him and wiggling his fingers, looking for all the world like an epileptic monkey.

Finally, after what seemed like at least thirty minutes of this, Dennis said, “This is incredibly stupid. You’re all stupid.”

“I don’t know, it seems promising,” said Dee. “We could rebrand the museum— Beets, Pickles, and Interpretive Dance.”

“No, that doesn’t fit the theme,” Frank said. “You gotta stick to a  _ theme  _ with these Instagram hotspots, that’s the whole  _ point.”  _

“Whatever, I’m done,” said Dennis. “I’m going to go get some dinner. Anybody want to come, or are you too hypnotized by the idiot dance?”

Dee and Frank didn’t respond. Their eyes were busy tracking Mac and Charlie’s movements with enthralled intent. Dennis shook his head. “Suckers,” he muttered under his breath as he turned to go.

The door hadn’t even finished swinging closed behind Dennis when the unmistakable sound of a gunshot rang out from the street outside. There was a noise like a body hitting the sidewalk, which everyone soon found out was exactly what had happened.

The bullet had gone straight through Dennis’s heart. He was dead before he hit the ground. Blood was seeping through his gray shirt in a scarlet Rorschach, the splatter decorating the asphalt  around him with flecks of darkening liquid.

“Those goddamn gangbangers!” Frank yelled. “They killed Dennis!”

“I thought this neighborhood was rapidly gentrifying!” Dee wailed, in denial. 

“I’m gonna go chase those fuckers down,” Frank said furiously. “They will feel my wrath!” He moved to run off after the two cars that were peeling off down the street, still trading gunshots back and forth. 

“No!” Charlie grabbed the back of Frank’s collar to hold him back. “Help me get him inside. I’ve got an idea.” He looked up at Mac. Something unspoken crossed between them in an instant, and Mac nodded in silent agreement. 

Frank and Charlie carried Dennis’s body back into the bar and laid it down in the middle of the room, ceremonially. 

Dee sat on a barstool, biting her fingernails. Dennis looked so fragile lying there, extremely and totally dead. She thought about how if he had known he was going to get gunned down dramatically in broad daylight, he probably would have worn one of his nicer shirts.

“Are we not going to take him to a hospital?” she asked. 

“Dee, he’s fucking dead, you stupid bitch. Hospitals can’t make dead people alive again,” Mac said.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Charlie said. “But  _ we  _ can.” 

“Um. What?” Dee said, not understanding. She looked at Frank, who shrugged back. 

Mac cracked his knuckles. “You guys better sit tight. This might take a while.”

 

***

 

Dee and Frank had fallen asleep on the floor of the bar sometime around midnight, hours after Mac and Charlie had begun their weird ritual. 

When Dee opened her eyes again in the morning, she was impressed to see they were still at it. Charlie looked like he was about to shit his pants, and Mac smelled like he already had, but they were still repeating the movements, over and over, as the dawn light filtered into the bar. 

“Frank, get up,” she hissed, elbowing him in the side. He grunted and rolled over, blinking awake. 

“Mother of god, they’re still going,” Frank said, putting his glasses on. Squinting at Dennis’s supine form, he noticed something very strange: the bloodstain on the t-shirt was slowly growing smaller and smaller.

Dee must have noticed it too, because she was suddenly clutching at Frank, and he was grabbing her back, and then they were both staring in hopeful disbelief as the blood receded fully from the center of Dennis’s chest, and the color returned first to his extremities and then to his face. 

Dennis lurched back to life with a huge, gasping breath, his limbs flailing. Charlie and Mac stopped the dance, finally, gazing down at their reanimated friend. 

“Goddammit,” said Dennis, staring back up at them, “I hate being wrong.”

Charlie whooped triumphantly, leaning across Dennis on the ground to slam a high-five with Mac, who was grinning widely.

Frank rushed to Dennis’ side. “Did you see the light at the end of the tunnel, Dennis? Did you see Barbara?”

“No! Ugh, get away from me,” Dennis said, tilting his head to avoid Frank’s attempt at a facial caress. 

“Frank, give the man some space, for crying out loud, he just came back from the dead,” Mac said.

“Dennis, did you get the third movement?” Charlie asked urgently.

“You know I did, bitch,” Dennis said. He propped himself up on his elbows. “It was amazing. And I saw what these movements can do— I mean, stuff you’d never believe!” 

Charlie nodded. “Yeah! Yeah, exactly!”

Dee said, “You’re saying they can do cooler shit that, I don’t know,  _ resurrect dead people?  _ I mean, that was pretty crazy.” 

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” Dennis said. “Your puny brain probably couldn’t comprehend the majesty of the revelations I have received.” 

“Uh huh, and what revelations are those?” Dee snarked.

“Parallel dimensions. Alternate worlds. Five movements together let you jump out of this universe into another.” His proclamation rang out like a bell, echoing inside of the empty bar.

“No shit,” said Frank. “So we’re doing a quantum mechanics scheme today?” 

“Guys, guys, this is is all very exciting,” Mac said, “but can we hold this thought? Just for a sec? I gotta go change my pants.”

***

Dennis taught them all the third movement, and they practiced the first three together until they could do them with perfect feeling. 

By that point in the morning some regulars were starting to filter into the bar. Dennis went to bartend, while Charlie and Mac sat in the back office with Dee and Frank, brainstorming how to get the last two movements. 

“Come on, just do the basement method,” Charlie was saying, frustrated. 

“No way,” said Dee resolutely. “I’m not going down there. I’m super allergic to the black mold, it inflames my sinuses, makes my face all red. If we’re going to another dimension, I need to be looking my best.” 

“I’m not going down either,” Frank said. “Those stairs are hell on my joints. I’m saving my flexibility for the dancing.” 

“You could shoot us,” Dee suggested, “and then bring us back like you did with Dennis.” 

“Okay, first of all,” said Charlie, “we don’t have a gun. Why would we have a gun? Did you think we had a gun this entire time? Second of all, I am so fucking tired. Resurrection is hard work. I don’t have it in me for another one. You gotta keep it simple.” 

Frank said, “How about you throw me out the window? I could crash through it, like  _ Die Hard!”  _

“No, no, no, I  _ just _ replaced our windows and it cost so much money. Definitely not!” Charlie said.

“This is ridiculous,” said Mac, leaning back in his chair. “We need those movements! This isn’t going to work if you guys can’t agree on an efficient way to kill yourselves.” 

“Yeah, Dee,” Frank said. “Make up your goddamn mind. You’re going to ruin this for all of us.” 

“Me?  _ I’m  _ going to ruin it? I’ve never ruined a scheme in my life!” Dee shrieked. Her face suddenly grew dark and demonic, and she reached out her hands and began to strangle Frank, right there in the office. “It’s always  _ you _ and your stupid—”

Before Dee could finish her sentence, Frank had his hands around  _ her  _ throat, choking her out as she was doing the same to him. They fell to the floor, tussling, as Mac and Charlie simply stood back and let it happen. 

Within a minute, they were both lying still, not breathing.

“Well, I guess that works as well as anything,” said Mac. 

Dennis arrived at the door of the office, alerted by the ruckus to the recent development. “How convenient,” he said, looking down at Dee and Frank. 

Charlie got up and began to rustle around in the desk drawers for something. “Aha!” he exclaimed, pulling out something small and black.

Mac leapt backwards. “Is that a fucking  _ gun?”  _

“Oh my god. Did I not just say we  _ don’t  _ have a gun? Nobody is listening to me today,” Charlie said. He held up the object. It was certainly gun-shaped, but it had a fluorescent yellow tip. “It’s a Taser.”

He leaned over the prone body of Frank, brought the Taser down onto his back, and pulled the trigger. Frank jerked to life, the electricity surging through him, and Charlie quickly drew the stun gun away.

“I got it,” Frank panted. “The fourth movement. I have it, Charlie!”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Charlie said. He moved to Dee and Tased her as well. She shuddered awake as the electricity restarted her heart. 

“Did you get it?” Mac asked excitedly. “The fifth movement?”

In response, Dee twisted her head and spat a mouthful of blood out onto the floor. “Fuck,” she said. “No. I didn’t. Shit. God dammit.”

Dennis crowed with satisfaction. “I told you! What’d I say! Your imbecilic cranium couldn’t possibly hope to contain the miracles of the movements.” 

“Dennis, I wish you were still dead.”  

 

***

 

It didn’t take them long to get Frank’s movement down, but at a certain point when it became clear that the fifth movement wasn’t just going to magically appear out of thin air, they all took seats at the bar and cracked open beers.

“So, we’re clear on what dimension we’re going to, right?” Dee said. 

“Obviously,” Dennis said. “The dimension where we’re all rich and famous.” 

“Cheers, I’ll drink to that, bro,” Charlie said, clinking bottles with Dennis. 

“I’m gonna be swimming in cash. Rolling in dough,” Mac said. “I’m gonna have a hot wife and a nice car and a  _ huge  _ house.”

“This kind of speculation is all well and good,” Frank said, “but let me remind you dipshits that we are lacking the final piece of our puzzle.” 

“Excuse me, Frank, you’re not allowed to call a dead man a dipshit,” Dennis said. “Have some respect for the deceased.”

“You don’t look dead to me, idiot,” Dee said.

“Yeah, and who does he have to thank for that, you stupid bird?” Charlie yelped.

Their voices grew louder and their insults grew more unlikely until suddenly, a voice broke through the clamor:

“Would you all  _ shut the fuck up?”  _

The gang looked at each other in confusion, trying to identify the source of the interruption. Everyone was shaking their head, mouthing  _ not me _ . 

“I’m over here.” 

They all turned as one to see a lone figure seated at the end of the bar. He was a young-looking guy none of them had seen before, not one of their regulars, wearing a purple sweater with a wolf on it. 

He lifted his hands to his face, his right hand flat in front of his left, from which he extended his middle and pointer finger and slowly drew them apart, forming a V, like a peace sign.

“What— what is that, some kind of European fuck-you?” Mac said, immediately offended. 

“I’ll have you know I am the proprietor of this establishment,” Dennis said pompously, “and I will not be insulted by foreign hand gestures in my own bar. Get out!”

“Jesus,” said the man. “You guys really are batshit.” He got up from his stool and walked to the door. 

“Be careful what you wish for,” he said. And with that, the stranger took his leave, and the gang was alone in the bar. 

Charlie was the first to speak.

“...I think that dude just gave us the fifth movement.”

 

***

 

They stood in a circle in the middle of the bar. 

“Are you guys ready for some dimensional action?” Charlie yelled, in his best drill-sergeant impression. He was trying to cover up how nervous he was. If this somehow ended badly, which was a definite possibility, given the fact they had zero experience traveling between worlds, he knew he’d be the one taking the heat. 

“Are you ready to bust through the walls of this universe? To take what is rightfully yours? Money, fame, success, respect?”

“Hell yes!” Mac shouted, a bit too loudly. 

“Definitely,” Frank said.

“One hundred percent,” said Dee.

“Let’s just fucking do it,” Dennis said. 

So they breathed and hissed and crouched and twirled and heaved and twisted and then stepped forward, hand over hand in the fifth movement. Something invisible opened up in the air around them and they were _pulled_ into it, and then pushed out of it just as abruptly—

Charlie’s ears were ringing, and he was blinded by bright lights. 

He squinted out at the bar around him. His friends were all wincing against the lights and the ringing too. But there were other people in the room, the bar wasn’t empty like it had been just moments before...

Someone yelled, “Cut!” 

Charlie looked around frantically. Behind him there were people with clipboards and walkie-talkies milling around. The ceiling of the bar was gone; in its place was a high warehouse roof hung with equipment and cables. A large camera dolly was being wheeled away by a woman wearing all black.

A man in a baseball cap said, “That’s a wrap on Always Sunny, season 10! Great job, guys.” 

Charlie watched as the man crossed the room to shake hands with... Mac? He strained to hear the words they exchanged. Something about “rushes tomorrow” and “final runtime” and “actually under budget.” 

The man said, “See you at the wrap party, Rob,” and walked away. 

“Thanks Matt!” Mac was taking a fancy phone out of his pocket now that Charlie was certain hadn’t been there before, and scrolling through it. “Here, get together, let’s take a photo for the show Twitter!” 

Nobody moved. 

“What? Why are you guys all looking at me like that?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> this is extremely the OA subreddit's fault: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheOA/comments/bpeitz/omg_yall_im_dying_i_was_showing_my_niece_the/
> 
> Full disclosure I haven't watched Sunny regularly since Season 10 probably so that's why this is set around then lol.


End file.
